January 2015 Next General Meeting Jan. 28th

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1 1 January 2015 Next General Meeting Jan. 28th Happy New Year everyone! Presidents Notes Our first board meeting of the year brought out some interesting ideas and observations. We thoroughly reviewed the Holiday Party and everyone agreed they had a good time and ate well. As always, it couldn't have happened without the generous support of many people, so thanks to all, especially Jack Davi our organizer, and Tracy Peters and Rick Bourgeois for organizing and preparing the food. Andrea Achelis' decorations were once again spectacular. Wasn't Scott Achelis amazing as an impromptu auctioneer? Rick's player piano provided very pleasant entertainment - thank you Mr. Bourgeois! (By the way, that's how Rick makes his living - if anyone wants a player piano, talk to Rick.) The chapter finances are positive, but the board wants to stress to anyone who has spent money on the chapter's behalf that they need to present their request for reimbursement in a timely manner, complete with receipts. Any expenditure for the chapter must be previously approved by the board (if less than $250) or by the general membership. Our credits for flying Young Eagles have been successfully applied to offset the cost of the 2014 Air Academy attendee, as well as the deposit and part of the tuition for this year's person. (We earn credit for each Young Eagle flown, which translates to money that can be used to offset Young Eagle program expenses, including the Air Academy.) We will be soliciting candidates for this year's Academy shortly - please contact Bill Bower if you have someone in mind. it some thought - anything from patio furniture to new windows to a dishwasher have been mentioned so far. Thinking of dishes, the board is exploring the idea of purchasing some dinner plates, tablecloths, etc. instead of paying to rent them for each Holiday Party (we paid $500 this year). MDPA would probably share them (and the costs) with us. We are exploring offerings now, and expect that in just two years or less we could break even. MDPA has planned an exciting year of activities and has invited EAA members to join in. They typically take place on the first Saturday of the month with a pancake breakfast followed by a flying safety topic and then a fly-out to an interesting destination. Some highlights are: March 7: Take a flight instructor to lunch at Watts/Woodland airport June 6: Poker run from Concord to Byron (each airplane flies to five different airports, receiving one playing card at each airport.) October 3: Spot landing contest at Byron Contact Bob Weiss for more information (Bob is a chapter member as well as the new president of MDPA.) The airport has allocated $7500 in their fiscal 2014/2015 budget for further Clubhouse improvements. Please give

2 2 Board Meeting Notes January 3 rd 2014 Present: Bill Reining, Pete Mitchell, Bob Belshe, Renee Robinson, Rich Bourgeois, Harvard and Sara Holmes, Guy Jones, Scott Achelis, members Stephen Tucker and Scott Davis. President Bill Reining called the meeting to order at 19:00. National has announced that a Ford Tri-motor will be visiting the west coast. Bill will offer our services. If accepted we will need hanger space, financial and community support. Secretary Pete Mitchell 2015 dues paid 25, due 28, plus 3 lifetime = 56. We have 5 that did not renew from 2013 Because of doctors orders Jack Davi has tendered his resignation as chapter vice-president and must restrict his young eagles activities. Treasures Bob Belshe Website Renee Robinson Renee will be updating our website and membership lists in January. Holiday Party The consensus is that the party was a success. Some bills are still pending but it appears we made a profit. Dishes, linen, cutlery cost us over 400 dollars. We will be looking into purchasing some of these items. An effort will be made to streamline the signup/entrée selection process. Combining dinner and dues resulted in nearly half of dues collected. Our small kitchen was a very busy place. Cleanup needs volunteers. Meeting Rich s menu, Corn Chowder, salad, dinner rolls, dessert, coffee and drinks. Tracy is working on riveting demonstration. Possible hanger tour for February. Adjourned 21:10 PJM Air Show Schedule 2015 NAF El Centro CA Mar 14 Riverside Airshow Mar 28th Pacific Coast Dream Machines Half Moon Bay Ca April 26th March ARB Open House May 19-20th AOPA Fly in Salinas May 16th Our bank balance is $4,500 with some bills outstanding. Turn in your receipts as soon as possible. It aids the treasurer in his duties. We have paid our national renewal and website fees. Jack Davi and Scott Achelis have outstanding bills. We used the balance of our 2014 ($210) young eagle credits as a deposit toward our 2015 candidate. Events/AOPA-Fly-In/2015/About Hollister Airshow June 20-21st Wings over Gillespie June 20-21st airshowsandiego Golden West Flyin and Airshow June 6-7 and 8th Marysville Ca Porterville Air Show June 9th PortervilleAirport/airport_activities.cfm Airventure 2015 Oshkosh Wi July 20-26th

3 3 It s been nearly a century since gyroscope pioneer Elmer Sperry created the first true autopilot. And autopilots have come a long way since. The most sophisticated can even land the airplane, steer it down the centerline on roll out, and brake the airplane to a stop. What hasn t been as successful is creating and maintaining the man-machine interface between the human pilot and iron mike. In many respects the more capable the autopilot has become, the more difficult it is for the human to correctly use and manage the machine. Now the self-driving car autonomous operation, if you prefer is here. Several automakers claim they could deliver a car that drives itself right now if regulators allowed it. And there seems to be wide agreement that many cars will be driving themselves down the streets and highways of the civilized world by What this means is that instead of thousands of pilots learning to successfully use autopilots we will soon have millions, maybe many millions, of drivers doing the same thing. The expected explosion in autonomous driving machines will allow us to discover new problems, and new solutions at a very rapid pace. Nothing teaches what works and what doesn t better and faster than having a whole bunch of people trying to learn the same thing at once. The lessons from airplane autopilot use is that the machines are not 100 percent reliable, but the bigger problem is that more frequently the autopilot is performing as designed but the human pilot doesn t understand how it should be functioning. My favorite story about autopilot mismanagement came from the old King Radio company. King had a service hangar on the airport near its headquarters in Olathe, Kansas. One day an irate Bonanza owner arrived screaming that his King autopilot was trying to kill him. The Bonanza owner said the airplane, with autopilot engaged, pitched down unexpectedly. He grabbed the controls and pulled back as hard as he could. Luckily he had a friend in the right seat who got on the controls and helped him pull. Together they pulled as hard as they could while one finally was able to pull the autopilot circuit breaker. But the autopilot was still fighting them. It wouldn t disengage. They both battled the nose-down control force all the way to touchdown cursing the autopilot that wouldn t let go. What happened, of course, is that the pilot started pulling on the controls before disengaging the autopilot. Sensors in the autopilot interpreted the pilot s actions as the need for nose-down trim and automatically started rolling the trim in, and kept at it. By the time the pilots got the breaker pulled and the autopilot

4 4 Mac s Blog Cont. truly dead they still had full nose-down trim fighting them. They didn t understand their original actions, and so didn t know to simply re-trim the airplane and go land. That s an example of the most basic mismanagement of autopilots. More common errors are failing to understand what a mode selection will do. Or why it may or may not capture a glideslope from above. Or why it didn t switch from roll steering to approach mode. Or what the heck is FLCH mode? And on and on. There is a little standardization in autopilot design and function, but there are often differences in how the same autopilot operates from one airplane type to another. And, except for newer airplanes with totally standardized cockpits, there is very little complete training on how to use autopilots at the GA level. My question is will the car guys do better? No matter how incomplete pilot training is, driving training is essentially zero. That means the car autopilot will have to be so intuitive that drivers get it right the first and every time with about the same level of instruction on how to operate the entertainment system. Well, actually it needs to be easier to use the car autopilot than the radio or there will be cars driving off to who knows where. Driving a car in the close confines streets and roads, along with the stop and go that is part of traffic, is daunting compared to the relatively wide open spaces we fly through. But the car guys aren t bound by evolutionary designs as we are in aviation. The car autopilot can start from scratch, using very advanced technology, and can be integrated fully during original design of the car. But I believe there will be one issue both airplane and car autopilots share many people just won t trust them. I have seen that for decades in aviation where human pilots, especially when the workload is high and when they need the autopilot most, just can t trust it and turn it off. I bet we will see the same in cars. Most of us have been driving since we were teenagers and when that darn thing does something we don t like, or don t expect, we ll be looking for the off button. However soon it happens the self-driving car can only be good news for teaching us how to make an autopilot we humans understand, and trust, at least most of the time. Let the great experiment begin. Posted in Mac Clellan's Left Seat Blog

5 5 Chapter 399 Members Gone to that Big Hanger but never forgotten. Raymond Walter Nilson passed away quietly December 12, 2014 from complications associated with diabetes. Ray was born in 1926, to Walter and Clara (West) Nilson of Pleasanton, California. He attended Amador Valley Joint Union High School in Pleasanton and University of the Pacific in Stockton. He earned a Masters in Education at Pepperdine University. Ray served as a Private First Class in the U.S. Army from 1944 to I n 1950, Ray married Mary Ann Gustafson. Over the course of 62 years together they lived in Stockton, Concord and Clayton, California. They raised five children while working as teachers in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District. For most of Ray s career he taught Social Studies and Woodshop to students at Pleasant Hill Intermediate School. Students remember his daily question, What s new in the world? as he encouraged them to read newspapers and engage in the news of the greater world. Raymond served in several community and professional organizations including the Boy Scouts of America, Mt. Diablo Education Association, and the Experimental Aircraft Association #393. At the age of 48, Ray started flying lessons at Buchannan Field. After obtaining his private pilot s license, he built a Christen Eagle II aerobatic stunt plane. In 2000, Ray s idea of retirement was to begin building an RV-9A single engine, low-wing sport aircraft. With the help of good friends, Ray was able to witness the RV-9 take flight this autumn. Ray is predeceased by his wife Mary Ann Gustafson Nilson and son Mark Raymond Nilson. He is survived by his son David Nilson, of Seattle, daughters Holly Nilson (Carol) of Seattle, Wendy Pike (Stuart) of Costa Rica and Amy Spanne (Alan) of Seattle. He is survived by three grandsons, Javin Nilson Smith and Phillip and Warren Spanne. A memorial will be held Saturday, June 20, p.m. at Buchannan Field at his hangar next to the EAA #393 Club House, 200 Sally Ride Drive. Remembrances may be made to The Mary Ann Scholarship Fund at University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Ave, Hand Hall, Stockton, CA 95211

6 6 Clotilde (Tillie) Perez Larkins January 3, 1916 ~ January 11, 2015 Tillie was born on January 3, 1916, in the copper mining town of Chuquicamata, Chile, to Angel and Maria Perez, who had emigrated from Spain to South America in search of a better life. When Tillie was three years old, the family headed for Canada, but met a fellow Spaniard on the voyage who told them that the climate of the San Francisco Bay Area was very similar to their home in Spain. They got off the ship and settled in the company town of Cowell, near Concord, where Tillie s father and uncles found work with the Cowell Portland Cement Company. Tillie was extremely proud to have lived in Contra Costa County for the rest of her life, except for one year when she was ten years old. The family packed up and moved to Colombia, South America, in hopes of making a fortune raising coffee. When that venture proved unsuccessful, she returned to Cowell with her parents and sister. After attending the one room Cowell grammar school, Tillie graduated in 1934 from Mt. Diablo High School. Her first job was as the switchboard operator for the town of Cowell s telephone system. Shortly afterwards she became secretary for the plant superintendent of the cement company. When the plant closed in 1946, she went to work for the War Assets Administration, selling surplus World War II airplanes at Buchanan Field in Concord. A short time later, she became the airport manager s secretary, a position she held for 32 years. She enjoyed interacting with the public, talking with pilots and aircraft owners and reporting the current airport weather for a local radio station. It was at Buchanan Field that Tillie met William (Bill) Larkins, who regularly came around the airport to take photos of airplanes. After meeting Tillie, his visits became even more frequent. They were married in July 1950 at Queen of All Saints Church in Concord and moved into the home they had watched being built in the new Fair Oaks subdivision in Pleasant Hill. This is still the family home 64 years later. Their two daughters, Mary and Joan, remember how supportive and involved Tillie was with their activities. She was a Girl Scout Leader and ran the free Girl Scout uniform exchange out of the front room closet for many years. She taught catechism and chauffeured the girls to piano, ballet, ice skating and horseback riding lessons. Tillie provided a strong role model for her daughters, demonstrating an unwavering commitment to her family, while working in a career outside the home and volunteering in the community. Tillie was also a key supporter of Bill s aviation history activities with her own memberships in the American Aviation History Society and the Society of Aviation History. She called each of Bill s aviation books her book children. After her retirement in 1979, Tillie enjoyed going to the Pleasant Hill YMCA for 30 years, participating in swimming, water aerobics and a monthly birthday lunch club. She was passionate about Contra Costa history. She and Bill volunteered every Tuesday for 25 years in the photo department at the Contra Costa Historical Society and were members of the Concord and Pleasant Hill Historical Societies. She never tired of looking out the front window of their home to see her beloved mountain, Mt. Diablo. Bill and Tillie were founding members of both Christ the King and Most Precious Blood (now St. Francis of Assisi) parishes and helped compile the history of St. Francis for its 50 year anniversary in Tillie loved her sons-in-law, Joseph and Robert, and was happy that her daughters have long and loving marriages. She delighted in her grandchildren, Tom and Anna, and spoke affectionately and proudly of them and their accomplishments. She couldn t stop smiling when Tom told her he had proposed to Ayesha and was elated about their wedding in May Tillie was blessed with a long and wonderful life, filled with strong faith, meaningful work, the love of family and the support of a wide circle of friends. After a family celebration on January 3rd for her 99th birthday, Tillie grew weaker and passed away on January 11, She was preceded in death by her sister, Marie Perez, and her infant grandson, Alexander Woelfel. She is survived by her loving husband of 64 years, William T. Larkins of Pleasant Hill, daughters Mary (Joseph) Woelfel of Lodi, and Joan (Robert) Mather of Portland, ME, and grandchildren Thomas (Ayesha) Woelfel and Anna Woelfel, of San Francisco. Friends and family are invited to a memorial mass on Thursday, January 15 at 12:30 pm at St. Francis of Assisi Church, 860 Oak Grove Road, Concord, CA The family will hold a private committal service at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery in San Pablo on January 16. Memorial donations may be made to the Contra Costa Historical Society, 724 Escobar St., Martinez, CA or to a charity of your choice.

7 7 Wednesday Fly Outs By Harvard Holmes To maintain proficiency, a number of pilots get together on Wednesdays and fly somewhere for lunch. Many of the aircraft owners in the chapter participate. Passengers are always welcome. Not only is it a great way to see the Bay Area, its also fun to see and ride in our members aircraft. The address is wedflyout@eaa393.org. You may contact Harvard Holmes at harvardholmes@comcast.net or Renee Robinson webmaster@eaa393.org to be added or removed from the list. Generally, someone who wants to go flying will send a suggestion to the list a day or two before. Those who can go will respond, and a destination selected. Recent destinations have include: Half Moon Bay, Petaluma. Santa Rose, Ukiah, Boonville, Shelter Cove, Willows, Auburn, Sacramento, Lodi, Stockton, Merced Watsonville, Lake Tahoe and Salinas. If the weather is poor a selection may be made as late as Wednesday morning. Young Eagles-Next Rally scheduled for April 18, Rally schedule for April 18 The Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 393 of Concord, CA P.O. Box 6524, Concord, CA nle@eaa393.org Officers/Appointees for President: Bill Reining pres@eaa393.org Vice President: Jack Davi veep@eaa393.org Secretary Pete Mitchell secty@eaa393.org Treasurer Bob Belshe treas@eaa393.org Newsletter Editor Bill Bower nle@eaa393.org Tech. Counselor Rick Lambert tc@eaa393.org Tech. Counselor Bob Sinclair N320sierra@gmail.com Young Eagles Renee Robinson yec@eaa393.org Dinner Coordinator Rick Bourgeois RicFlyer@Comcast.net Photographer Tom Howard photog@eaa393.org Chapter meetings are held on the 4th Wednesday of the month at 200 Sally Ride Dr Concord Ca. Meetings are open to anyone who loves aviation and wants to learn more. May 16 June 20 August 22 September 19 October 17 All are welcomed. Menu for Jan 28th Meeting Corn Chowder Salad Dinner Rolls and Dessert Coffee and drinks.

8 8 Meeting and Event Schedule Board Y Eagles General Fly-out Other 2693 Clayton Rd Concord CA or Maintenance - Avionics - Fuel/Line Service Larry E. Rohrbacher Line Service Manager General Meeting Jan 28, 2015 Board Meeting Feb 5, 2015 General Meeting Feb 25, 2015 Board Meeting Mar 4, 2015 General Meeting Mar 25, 2015 Board Meeting Apr 1, 2015 Young Eagles Rally Apr 18, 2015 General Meeting Apr 22, 2015 Board Meeting May 6, 2015 Young Eagles Rally May 16, 2015 General Meeting May 27, 2015 Board Meeting June 3, 2015 Young Eagles Rally June20, 2015 General Meeting June 24, 2015 July AirVenture 2015 Our meetings are open to the public. Join us for dinner at 6:30 pm ($7 donation) with the general meeting at 7:30 pm on the above dates in the Club House 200 Sally Ride Dr. Chapter 393 fly-outs are open to chapter members and guests. EAA Chapter 393 P.O. Box 6524 Concord, CA We are on the Web! nle@eaa393.org Like us on Facebook